Giving a Full 5%

Updated Aug. 4, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

Charitable foundations do much good work, but they can also be as unaccountable as the federal bureaucracies they often resemble. A useful effort is under way on Capitol Hill to compel foundations to do more of what they were ostensibly set up to do -- give to charity.

Representatives Roy Blunt (R., Missouri) and Harold Ford (D., Tennessee) are pushing legislation to curb a common abuse at many of the biggest charities: counting dollars spent on executive salaries, travel and lavish offices and other administrative costs...